DAVID VINCKBOONS
1570-ciRCA 16328ç Peasant Kermis
Pen and brown ink and brown and gray wash; H: 21.3
cm (8^3 /s in.); W: 33.9 cm (i3^5 /i6 in.)
88.GA.I2Ç
MARKS AND INSCRIPTIONS: (Recto) at bottom right
corner, unknown collection mark B, signed and dated
D VB 1604 in brown ink; on mount, at center, inscribed
Vinck-Boons. in black ink; (verso) unknown collection
mark B stamped twice; on mount, inscribed 65. in
brown ink.
PROVENANCE: Private collection (sale, Sotheby's, Lon-
don, November 22, 1974, lot 28); J. Theodor Cremer,
New York; art market, London.
EXHIBITIONS: None.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: W. WegnerandH. Pee, "DieZeichnun-
gen des David Vinckboons," Münchner Jahrbuch der Bil-
dendenKunst, 3rd ser., 31 (1980), pp. 39, 41; 63-64, under
no. 16; 65-66, no. 19; 72, under no. 27; P. C. Sutton et
al., Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting,
exh. cat. (Philadelphia Museum of Art; Gemàldegalerie,
Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin; and
Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1984), p. 352, under
no. 122, n. i;J. O. Hand et al., The Age of Bruegel: Neth-
erlandish Drawings in the Sixteenth Century, exh. cat. (Na-
tional Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and Pierpont
Morgan Library, New York, 1986), p. 300, under no.
118, n. 4; J. Briels, Vlaamse Schilders in de Noordelijke Ned-
erlanden in het Begin van de Gouden Eeuw 1585-1630 (Ant-
werp, 1987), pp. 122, fig. 140; 125.
VINCKBOONS'S SURVIVING DRAWINGS OF A KERMIS, OR
peasant festival, include four that date successively to
1602 (Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst, Den Ko-
neglige Kobberstiksamling inv. SK 18.7), 1603 (Pierpon
Morgan Library inv. m, 164), 1604 (the present sheet),
and 1605 (Amsterdam, P. and N. de Boer collection).
Like the Morgan drawing of a year earlier, the Getty ex-
ample seems to have been made as an independent work
of art. It reflects the precedents of what now appears to
be Vinckboonss earliest surviving kermis scene, the
well-known .painting in the Staatliche Kunstsammlun-
gen, Dresden,^1 and the Copenhagen drawing of 1602,
which was engraved twice.^2 The overall disposition of
the figures is closest to the artist's painting Village Festival
(Paris, private collection), which K. Goossens dated to
circa 1604 (Wegner and Pee 1980, p. 65, under no. I9).^3
The present example is more dynamic spatially than
Vinckboonss earlier peasant kermis drawings, largely
due to the focus on the "round dance" that snakes into
the distance. The gray washes lending weight to the fig-
ures and the finely delineated church in the background
are precedents for similar features in the 1605 drawing.^41. Although dated circa 1611 by K. Goossens in David Vinck-
boons (Antwerp, 1954), pp. 78-79, it has recently been noted
that there is a copy of this undated painting in Kroméríz Castle
(inv. 365), signed and dated 1601 (Sutton et al. 1984, p. 352, n.
2, under no. 122).- F. W. H. Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings
and Woodcuts, ca. 1450—1700 (Amsterdam, 1949), vols. 3, no.
320; 4, no. 171.
3. See also Goossens (note i), pp. 70-71. - There is a copy of the present drawing in the Herzog Anton
Ulrich-Muséum, Braunschweig; see E. Flechsig, Zeichnungen
alter Meister im Landesmuseum zu Braunschweig (Frankfurt,
1925), no. 68.
212 FLEMISH SCHOOL • VINCKBOONS